MONKEYS 7 



as yet, it is quite out of our power to return answers. 

 Which group is the older ? Did monkeys, as is commonly 

 supposed, first exist in the Old World ? If so, then did 

 the American monkeys originate in the New World ? and 

 if not, how did they find their way into it and whence 

 did they come ? 



It is a common opinion that the aboriginal tribes of 

 American men are of Mongol affinity and migrated from 

 Asia ; but as this is a question we have not studied, we 

 preserve an open mind concerning it. Although wild 

 American dogs have been domesticated, Asiatic emi- 

 grants may none the less have brought domestic dogs 

 with them. But however this may be, it is pretty certain 

 they brought with them no monkeys. No fossil remains, 

 so far as we know, at all justify a belief in the Old 

 World origin of New World forms ; so that up to the 

 present time the relative age of the two groups and the 

 origin of either of them are mysteries. Speculative 

 opinions have indeed been formed favouring the notion 

 that the American apes are specially related to certain 

 creatures called Lemurs (to be seen in many zoological 

 gardens) which have their headquarters in Madagascar. 

 The evidence, however, upon which some naturalists 

 rely as justifying this opinion, is, in our eyes, untrust- 

 worthy. Neither have we been able to detect any sign 

 of the former existence of creatures of the monkey 

 kind th;it were intermediate between those of the Old 

 World and those of the New ; so that it seems to us not 

 improbable that the two groups may have had an entirely 

 different origin, and that the points of structure in which 

 they so remarkably agree, are but analogical resemblances 

 and not signs of any special blood relationship between 

 the two. Bearing in mind the great distinctness of these 

 two families, we may now proceed briefly to review the 



